Update Manager broken?

It's probably due to 'packagekit' when packages are kept back, the user should know what he/she is doing.
You may try:
sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude safe-upgrade

If certain, answer questions with [Y]

Hmm, or try reinstalling gnome in Synaptic Package Manager

System - Administration - Synaptic

it asks for your normal user password, not your SuperUser/Root one. In the "File" menu try "Fix broken packages", also click the "Mark all updates" and then click on the "Apply" button. With things like window-manager and different desktop environments (Xubuntu's Xfce might be worth a try) you don't really need to uninstall then to switch back to whatever you had before. At the login prompt you can change the environment or else just re-install the old one again and then it takes precedence.

Ubuntu isn't really ideal for messing around with DE's or WM's though - it might be worth adding one of the new Wolvix betas as an additional linux in your dual/multi-boot. Then maybe post to their forum discussions about all this type of thing, or even try join in with their forum discussion before installing a Wolvix
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=wolvix
http://forums.wolvix.org/index.php/topic,1449.msg7210/topicseen.html
http://forums.wolvix.org/index.php/topic,1142.0.html
http://forums.wolvix.org/index.php/topic,1329.0.html
http://forums.wolvix.org/index.php/topic,1064.0.html

I hope you find something interesting in there - Oh and i hope the first part of this post helped solve the problems? I wasn't sure about Sam's answer but only because i prefer gui ways ;)

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Sam,
I ran the aptitude commands, and my kernel was updated (along with perl?). Had to rebuild my vmware afterwards; everything else appears to be working for now. However, the Update Manager is still the same == not working.
Thanx anyway.

Tom,
Tried your suggestions. My File menu does not have a "Fix broken packages", but that may be because under the Broken packages filter there are none. :)
Upgraded everything that it suggested - it was again something regarding linux kernel 2.6.28-13, which I thought I had installed after Sam's suggestions, but whatever ...

Now, in Synaptic, I have linux-restricted-modules-generic package listed as upgradable. When I try to upgrade that, I get the error: "Depends: linux-restricted-modules-2.6.28-13-generic but it is not installable"

I suspect this has nothing to do with my playing around with LXDE, but some unresolved dependencies somewhere? Could this be a bug?

Thanx all for your help.

Hi :)

Err i got the wrong menu, try the "Edit" menu in Synaptic instead, that should have "Fix broken packages" instead. I don't think you have a bug, i think it's just that you might be missing some sort of kernel tracking package but i can't think of the name of it right now. I've tried the search button in synaptic but haven't thought of the right search-string to look for. Sorry about that. Any unresolved dependencies should be fixed by the "Fix broken packages" i think.

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Tom,
You're right, Fix broken packages is under Edit. But it does not do anything, again, because I do not have any broken packages. I have a broken Update Manager, which cannot resolve some sort of dependency somewhere. :(
Thanx again for your help.

I think I found a (known) bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-meta/+bug/372876

The only remaining problem is: how do I fix it? :( According to the above bug report, this is involves some wireless stuff. I am running on a desktop (with no wireless capability). Can I just flat out uninstall the linux-restricted-modules?

Usually when they say "fix released" it means the fix is in the repos and so you should get it fairly soon in a normal update process. I have posted a question in the bug-thread to ask about that, and i've linked this question to the bug-report so hopefully we should be informed about what to do to fix this.

I'm really sorry i didn't know about the bug. Usually we would get an indication in here about the same thing going wrong for a lot of people, and then we would stumble across the bug-report. I guess i haven't been spending much time in here lately tho.

There does seem to be a lot of chatter about this mainly being a problem for wireless users but "restricted extras" covers much more than just wireless issues, i guess it's one of the obvious things that's most likely to cause frustration and worry tho

Anyway, thanks for digging through and finding the bug-report :)
Regards from
Tom :)

Tom,
So am I correct in that 1) I cannot just plain uninstall this even if I do not need wireless support, as it might break other things; and 2) I am SOL until there an official fix at some point in the future?
Thanx for all your help.

Seems to be feeling much better now. :)
Thank You!

Thanks but it was really you that solved this one :)
Finding that bug-report was the key :)
Thanks and regards from
Tom :)